


any four walls that enclose the right person

by madamebadger



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Families of Choice, Friendship, Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6251983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long time since Sera's had a home. It's been even longer since she wanted one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	any four walls that enclose the right person

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kamaevis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamaevis/gifts).



> I was so delighted by the prompt for this story, and can only hope I did it a bit of justice!

She's not going to stay long, Sera isn't. She reminds herself of that, sitting on one of the stools in the bar with her heel tucked up under her and watching people come and go. Few give her more than a second look, which is how she likes it. (The barwoman gives her a tap on the knee and says, none too soft, that she needs to keep the feet off the furniture, which Sera does until the moment her back's turned. Still, she doesn't take it personal: it's a lot nicer than she gets treated in most pubs.)

It's cold as fuck in Haven, and not really enough like a city while also being too much like a city, but that's not why she's not going to stay.

Outside the bar, there's some kind of commotion. The big tall warrior woman who shouts is shouting again, only unlike most of the time when everybody scuttles away from her like cockroaches from the light, this time whoever is shouting back. Sera files that away in her mind; probably means nothing, but you never know when something comes back to be important. Privately she thinks that whoever-it-is is onto the right thing; the warrior woman—Cassandra—shouts a lot, but it's the other big fancy name—the one who goes by Sister Leliana all demure and shit even though you can tell she's really Sister Stab You Soon As Look At You—that you really need to watch out for.

That's not why she's not going to stay either, though. After all, it's not so bad, really. It's not quite big enough to make her really comfortable, but if you sit in the bar long enough you can halfway pretend you're in a real city, and for all that it's cold enough to make your bits freeze off, there are plenty of blankets and fires even in the refugee camps. Plenty of food, too—although Sera has taken it upon herself to do some judicious rearranging. No reason the nobs up in the big chantry building should get all the beef and ham when those in the camps have nothing but bread and broth. She never did stick around long enough to see what happened when Prissface Josie's guests were ready for dinner and their rib roast was nowhere to be found, but sometimes she imagines it, and laughs. And now that beef is in the bellies of folk who hadn't had a meat meal for weeks or longer, which suits her just right.

No, Haven's not so bad, really, all things considered. There's plenty interesting going on, enough to not get bored, and lots of women who are real lookers (shouty Cassandra's well fit and not nearly as surly as she lets on, for one, and that Harding's cute as anything and with curves in all the right places—she's not really Sera's type, too fresh-scrubbed and wholesome-looking, but worth a second glance, and maybe a third. And the Lady Big Britches Herald, _whooo_ , Sera doesn't know where qunari women have been all her life but she's definitely _in favor)._

But she's going to leave probably sooner rather than later, anyway. It's her way, it's the way things go. You stay as long as things are interesting—and leave before you wear out your welcome. Sometimes Sera gets bored, or tired of people, and moves on to something else. Sometimes it's just that she thinks they're likely to get tired of her soon. And it's much better to go on your own, just up and disappear in the night maybe with a note behind telling where you hid the bodies (or maybe not), than to be thrown out. Hurts your rep to get tossed out by your own folk, like, and hurts maybe in other ways too. If you're going to go, best to do it on your own two feet. Walk away and don't look back. 

Still and all, truth is Haven's not so bad, and so far the Herald seems to find her amusing and not annoying. She'll stay for a while yet. At least while things stay interesting.

* * *

"I take back everything I ever said about Haven being cold, and wet, and depressing," Varric says, holding his hands out toward the fire. 

Normally, Sera's got less than no time for Varric's whining. Not that she doesn't whine herself, but the thing about Varric is, he's slumming. She's not sure the really fancy types know that, them who divide the world into 'noble' and 'not' and see any surface dwarf as 'not.' (There's not as many dwarves in the Jennies as there are elves and humans, but there's a few. Most dwarves who want to kick back join the Carta, though.) But the thing about Varric is, he might not be highborn, but he's _rich_. If he lives in a bar and drinks terrible beer and pulls the just-folks act, it's just that: an act. He's doing it because he enjoys it, not because he has no other options. Oh, Sera likes him well enough, he's funny and he's good at taking the piss out of people who have a stick up their arses, but she doesn't trust him.

All that aside, though, right now she can't hardly blame him. Haven lies in ruins behind them, and though the Herald made it out somehow (Sera will never forget the image of the Herald, all seven and a half feet of her, slung between Cassandra and Cullen, the human warriors looking almost little as they drag her great imposing frame through the snow) there's nothing to do but walk all day in the icy cold, and spend the evenings trying to keep their toes from freezing solid and snapping off.

"Reminds me of this time," Sera says, "reminds me of this time when I was in Kirkwall, yeah?"

"You were in Kirkwall?" (Varric responds to any mention of that city exactly as if it was an ex-girlfriend who he's still sweet on.)

"Little while. Didn't stay long. But the Jenny wayhouse they had, roof started getting all these holes, yeah? We kept tacking up oiled canvas when we could nick it from the shipyards, but that didn't half keep the wet out. I was damp for days."

"Does this story of yours have a point?" Varric asks.

"Not everybody's stories have to have fancy _points_ about 'em, all tied up nice and neat with a ribbon. It was wet, we were cold all the time, reminds me of this. This is colder. But we had less food in Kirkwall. So...."

"It reminds me of a time I was traveling across Orlais," Blackwall says. "Years ago now. No snow, but we were thigh-deep in cold mud. And our provisioner was shit, so our rations got damp and moldy."

"I would've deserted," Sera says. "I guess that's what I did in Kirkwall, only Jennies can't really desert, it's not that kind of a thing. But after a while I decided fuck this, there's nasty nobs in dry places too."

"So is there a reason you haven't deserted this time?" Varric asks.

The question pulls Sera up short, but only for a moment. That horrible day with the dragon and the avalanche would have been the perfect time to slip away, light off for Denerim or Val Royeaux or somewhere without snow and marching and dragons.

The truth is, it actually hadn't occurred to her. Not when nobody seems to want to kick her out, when Cassandra chuckles at her jokes and Harding trades tips on arrow-fletching. Not when the Herald smiles at her.

She doesn't want to think about that, though, so she sticks her tongue out and makes a noise. "Run back toward a dragon? Yeah, right, great idea. I'll stay here where there's the Seeker and the Herald between me and the demon-y bullshit, right?"

But that night, in the small tent in which she has been crammed alongside Harding and Charter, huddling for warmth together under the scratchy wool blanket... she wonders, quietly, why it is that it _didn't_ occur to her.

* * *

"Sera," the Herald—no, the Inquisitor, now; Inky, Sera thinks, and is satisfied, because 'Inquisitor' is way too fancy a name—"Sera," Inky says, "come upstairs for a moment with me, please?"

She talks all polite even though she's past seven feet of grey-skinned muscle with horns that could make an elk feel inadequate. If Sera was a giant mercenary she'd talk however she wanted and everyone else could stuff it, but Inky isn't... like that. Inky's soft-spoken and kind for all that she could crush most peoples' heads in her hands like overripe tomatoes, and she never gets upset, and it makes Sera want to stay close to her and maybe protect her (stupid as that is, and it _is_ stupid, but...) from anyone who might take advantage of her calm good nature. She's restful, kind of, in a way, which is a funny thing to say about someone who swings a spiked iron maul as thick as a tree branch.

Which makes this request, all nicey-nice like she said it, all the worse. 'Cause Sera knows what's coming. She's had this happen more than once, hasn't she? It's why she always leaves first, now, and _damn_ the bloody Maker, this time she misjudged. Got too comfortable.

"Yeah, whatever," Sera says, and there's surprise in Inky's golden eyes, but fuck it, if she's going to be told to pack up her crap and go, she's not going to grovel about it, at least.

Inky—the Inquisitor—leads her up the stairs, around the balcony, to a round room like a tower thingy. She gestures for Sera to go in, then shuts the door.

"I noticed you've been sleeping in all kinds of strange places," the Inquisitor says, and Sera grits her teeth. "And if you prefer that, then that's certainly fine, but I thought you might like a room of your own."

It takes a minute for it to sink in to Sera that she isn't being kicked out—she's being offered a _room._ Of her _own._ She hasn't had a room of her own since—no, no, she won't think of that; but in the Jennies you sleep six, eight, ten to a room, and she spent a lot of time breaking into barns and attics to bed down, or when she has a little coin, renting a spot at the inn for a night or two.

And this room is far better than she could have expected. Maybe, maybe she might have thought they'd give her a closet thingy or cell like some of the sisters have, a bed and a washbucket and a pot to piss in and a box to put your clothes in. But this is a big room, round, airy, golden with light coming in the windows, with soft padding on the benches—velvet! and never mind it's a little moth-eaten. The dust and the cracks in the windows can be mended. It's a room, a real proper room, and it'll be a nice one once she's had some time to fix it up.

( _No_ , says the wariest part of her. _Don't bother to fix it up. This won't last. You know it can't. You'll walk away, like you always do, and that's the way it has to be._

But for now, with the dust motes dancing in the early-evening sunlight that slants through the window, Sera allows herself for just a little while to ignore that part of herself.)

"You're offering me a room," Sera says slowly. "A room for _me_. I just want to make sure I'm hearing this right."

"Yes, of course." Inky's hand lands on her shoulder, huge and solid and warm. Her fingers are so long and wide that they cradle the entirety of her shoulder, from clavicle to shoulderblade. It's a friendly gesture, Sera knows, but she'll be thinking of that warmth and those big fingers long into the night. "You're a valuable member of the Inquisition, and... I would like to think, a friend, too. Of course I want to make sure you have someplace to call your own." She pulls her hand back and gives her head an embarrassed little tip. "I, er, I should tell you that I did offer this particular room to Varric first, since he asked specially for a room over the Tavern. But he didn't want it, he doesn't trust big exterior windows. It was actually Leliana that suggested I offer this room to you, when I was trying to figure out what you'd like."

 _That_ surely is a surprise. "What, Sister Scary?"

"She's not so bad," Inky says, mildly. "She said someone with your temperament would like having a private space of your own, but right in the middle of things, where you can keep an eye on the tavern and on the courtyard at the same time. And she said, with good sight lines. She's an archer herself, you know."

"Kind of a famous one, yeah," Sera says. "Almost as famous for arrowing archdemons in the eyeball as for making people piss themselves out of sheer terror."

"Anyway, she suggested you might like this particular room, and so...." Inky spreads her hands open. "It's yours, if you do."

"Mine like... mine? Like I don't have to share?" Sera perches on the windowseat, feeling the worn cushions give satisfyingly under her feet. "Like I can put up curtains or whatever bullshit people do when they have a home?"

"If you like." Inky looks amused, and pleased.

"And I can put all my stuff here?" Not that she has more stuff than she can carry on her back, these days. Not that she necessarily _wants_ more stuff than she can carry on her back and take away in a hurry, she tells herself... but it'd be nice to know if she _could_.

"Of course."

"And... I can hang up pictures? Like naked lady paintings?"

Inky rolls her eyes and laughs. "If you want, I suppose, but I'll ask you to keep your door closed in that case. Not everybody walking by necessarily wants to see naked lady paintings."

"Oooh, right, and what about you, fancy Lady Inquisitor? You like naked lady paintings?"

"It depends on the lady," Inky says with a wink, and she's out the door before Sera can come up with a sufficiently satisfying retort.

Instead, she yells through the door, "While you're getting rooms for people, see if you can get Beardy to stop sleeping in the hay all the time," and smiles at Inky's answering laugh.

* * *

Sera still doesn't know what to think. Part of her is still sure, still _sure_ , every time Inky wants to talk to her privately, that she's going to get asked to leave in Inky's polite but implacable tones. (And every time Leliana passes by all slinky and dangerous like a weird bard archer snake thing with pretty hair, Sera wonders if she's going to get disinvited from the Inquisition in a more violent fashion.) Part of her just knows. That's what happens. She leaves, or she's asked to leave, or everything goes horrible and wrong and leaving is the best of a lot of bad choices.

(It's not like this is the first time someone's given her something nice, right? But there's a price, there's always a price, and if you don't pay it with coin or with labor then you'll pay it with your soul, and she knows that, she does. She remembers the last time someone gave her something grand, and she walked away from it because it would have cost her her whole self. She remembers thinking she was loved and realizing that she was a toy, a thing for someone to make themselves feel better with. She remembers—

—no, she doesn't think about those things. There's a reason she always wants to stop as soon as a story gets good. Yeah, maybe there's even a happier ending coming up. But maybe there isn't. Stick with what you're allowed to have.)

And yet apparently there's some other part of her that doesn't believe that, because she starts filling up the room.

Oh, of course at first it's just that she doesn't carry everything with her all the time. She leaves some things: doesn't bring all of her spare clothes with her, keeps an extra pair of boots under the bed, stashes her journal so it won't get all wet and dirty. She comes back from the trip, and the room is still unoccupied by anyone else, and her things are still there, just like she left them, just like this really is _her room_ and not some mean joke. So she cleans it up, scrubs the floors and beats the dust out of the cushions and washes the windows, not because she _has to_ , not like _chores_ , but because this is her room and she wants it to be clean and friendly-like to come back to.

("We could do it for you, miss," said one of the housemaids—a shy girl named Millia, pretty in a dainty way that's not at all Sera's type. Sera refused her utterly. Having servants clean her things? No, no, hell of no; she'd have to be a totally different kind of person. But she does cadge a bucket of hot water with floor-washing soap, and a cake of the waxy lemon-y stuff that makes the floor all shiny and smells fresh and good, and something to wipe the dirt off the windows so they sparkle in the sunlight.)

"I wouldn't have taken you for house-proud," Blackwall says when he comes up to see her digs.

She crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue out at him. "M'not," she says. "But I'm going to live here, right? It's my place. I want it nice."

"Bit empty. Planning on decorating?"

"Maybe," Sera says.

* * *

"Decorating" turns out to be not quite the word.

She doesn't _mean_ to fill the room up. But knowing that she has a place to put things... things seem to start to accumulate. Some bolts of pretty cloth that at first she thinks she might use on the windowseat cushions, but that she turns out to really like just draped around, being shiny and pretty. A big Inquisition tapestry that she nicked from Cassandra to annoy her but that gives the room a certain... something. Curtains, like she said, and after she spends half an afternoon trying to hang them and failing, Harding shows up with a footstool and gives her a hand. ("My mom was a seamstress," Harding admits. "I know a few things.")

A lute, later, because—well, she _might_ learn to play a lute, right? No reason she can't. And a painting because she nicked it off some guy Josie was taking for a ride, some guy with more money than taste or sense, and it makes her laugh every time she sees it. And a plant in a basket hanging from the ceiling, so she has to get up on tiptoes on the cushions to water it.

She doesn't think too hard about what that means. It's easier if you don't think too hard. But at night, lying on the cushions of her windowseat covered her in a worn-soft old crocheted afghan (Inky had offered her a proper bed, but she _likes_ the window seat, where she can crack the window open on a nice evening and breathe the fresh night air), she lays looking at her things, the plant's leaves hanging over the edges, the courtyard torchlight shining off the various sparkly trinkets she'd picked up, the smell of dried flowers she'd snitched off the desk of someone-or-other. Her things, and a place for them. Things need a place, but for how long has it been that that place was no more than a pack she could carry on her back?

"You're going to turn into a proper pack rat," she whispers out loud to herself. "You're going to end up like that lady in Denerim whose house fell in on her and it turned out she'd collected five thousand empty wooden crates in her attic." But even those words can't dull the warm glow in her stomach.

_Stuff has a place. I have a place._

**Author's Note:**

> Quote is from Helen Rowland: "'Home' is any four walls that enclose the right person."


End file.
